Well, OK, i guess I recognize that people don't actually think we're near replicator technology, but I have wonder when they link to articles like this http://www.wired.com/autopia/2012/08/3d-print-ev/ as an example of "printing a car." It is the BODY of the car, damn it. All the important bits, the motor, batteries, drive train, wheels, accesspories... everything that makes it go, is specially manufactured.

To me a 3D printer is like a lathe or CNC machine... just another way to shape parts.

See, this is exactly the stupid shit I'm talking about. (Stupid as in how the articile is written and presented, not what the Belgian team created) People try to pass off articles like this as if the whole thing was printed as a fully functional device. Only the BODY of the car was (mostly) printed. That's it. You still have to, you know, buy the motor, drive train, wheels, seat, batteries, and various accessory parts, and assemble it. You might as well just buy a kit with the body already made because you have to buy everything else anyway. Hell, save yourself the time and buy the whole car fully assembled.

No, I didn't move the goal posts. I was making a point. And your
"printed car" example demonstrated it beautifully, thank you. 3D printers are mainly a step in manufacturing (or often just prototyping before manufacture). It isn't something for consumers. You couild of course use one in a home workshop, but in the hands of a consumer, mostly just a novelty.

Yeah, I guess I'm OK with not having any imagination if having one means wasting resources printing up disposable plastic junk. You know what, I hardly use my color printer either even though I'm sure you could think of a dozen possible "creative" uses for it. I'm unconvinced that a 3D printer in your average home wouuld be much more than a novelty (and probably a pain to use/maintain like inkjet printers). Would people find/create uses for them? Sure. Would it change much? Nope. No more than being able to print photos at home changed things.

Right, because people just love displaying cheap plastic figurines....?

clips for cable management,

$1 item?

a foot for that table or desk that always seems to wobble

What?

toys for kids,

Have you ever bought toys for kids?

, interesting pots for plants, hell you could print up doorknobs if you wanted.

Seriously? You're going to put cheap plastic doornobs in your house?

Basically any small piece of disposable what-not could be made on the 3D printer and that's most of what the average person buys.

No, I don't think that's most of what an average person buys. Not by a very long shot. Though it sounds like if YOU had a 3D printer, most of what you owned woudl be cheap disposable crap. Very little of what I buy is just a simple piece of plastic with no other components.

By "people" i meant general consumer. I fully admit that 3D printing could be useful in a workshop. I'd get one myself for my workshopt if only to play around with. I just don't see it used the way an inkjet printer is.

Look, I'm not saying 3D printing is useless. I'm just trying to keep it in perspective. Seems like every time it is brought up on reddit, people make it sound like they're replicators. Same thing happens when the topic of nanotechnology comes up. Everyone thinks "ZOMG nanobots!" but that's not really what nanotechnology is about.

Or they'll just be a convenient way to print up some spare parts for your washing machine

That alone would be a life changing technology. Spare parts for everything and anything just a download away.

You mean anything that happens to be compatible with whatever material your printer outputs. Not every part can be made of ABS plastic or whatever.

No more toys thrown away due to a cracked bit of plastic,

Right,because you know toy manufacturers are just going to release the blueprints for their toys....

just reprint the part. No more remotes with missing battery covers, just reprint the part. All the little plastic bits on your car will become much easier to replace, just download the 3D model someone somewhere would have made for it and print it.

This is life changing? Really?

I'm currently fixing an old Pinball machine.

Yes, I agree that people who are the type to do repairs and such would benefit from a 3D printer. I myself have considered getting a RepRap. But it would be in the room with the table saw, jointer, drill press, miter saw, and various other power tools. I just dont' see a 3D printer as something your average user would have much use for. Spending hundreds of dollars on a machine to print out battery covers... yeah, no.

they are actually using their technology to make parts that are stronger with less material, and certain shapes (objects with cavities, etc) can be made which were impossible with casting and milling.

Certain parts. Not everything is suited for that type of production.

. Manufacturing could be transformed.

Of course manufacturing will change and 3D printing will be a part of that, i never said anythingto the contrary. My problem in this thread is that so many people around here jump right to replicator type technology. And that's not what 3D printers are. They're just one more tool that manufacturers can use to create a complete product along side lathes, CNC machines. And that's not even talking about all the electronics and such that go into things. There are so many things that require very specific manufacturing techniques.

If I were to get a 3D printer, and I've considered it, it would be for my workshop. I would never expect to just print out fully functional complex devices. That kind of thinking is just ignorant.

I don't know, it seems your only real issue with 3D printers not being the end-all-be-all is that 3D printers are currently designed to use one material.

Not just one material, but materials optimized for printing, not real use.

Similar to paper printers moving from simple black inks to color inks, why couldn't we have different "3D inks" (if you will) that you could load the 3D printer up with, and have the printers designed to work with many different kinds of inks?

Same reason you can't load a laser printer with inkjet ink. Different technologies.

Not to say that it's not really far off, but I don't see it as completely unfeasible.

You can imagine anything if you say it is "really far off." I just don't respect that kind of prediction. Not outside of science-fiction.

I'm not ignoring anything. I'm just saying that none of those examples show promise for making general purpose home printing especially useful. Maybe advances will some day, but right now it is all guessing.

No, because early inkjet and dot-matrix printers were consumer oriented and there was already higher end printing available at the time. If you look at the state of the art back when dot matrix pritners were out, you could tell that photorealistic printing was not too far off. Also, using a single material (toner, ink, wax, etc) was not really a tight constraint. Your only goal is to create a photo representation of something. It was mostly just a matter of getting high enough resolution. For 3D printing, you need so much more than resolution to get anything resembling a replicator. For real objects, the material you build stuff out of is vitally important. You can't reproduce just any object from ABS plastic (or whatever material your printer is designed to use). The material is ultimately going to be optimized for printing, not the end product.

I'm not saying that some time far in the future we won't have replicators. I'm just saying 3D printers are not it. Not even close. And even the best 3D printer today wouldn't be of much use to average consumer.

Also, did photorealistic printing at home really change the world? Sure it is neat, but at most it just put traditional 1hr photo places out of business. And even then, a lot of people still send their digital photos to be professionally printed because consumer products suck or are otherwise inconvenient for bulk printing.

I think BartWellingtonson was talking about a much shorter timeframe. "When they become more common." That implies that we already have the technology to change the world. It just needs to be a bit smaller and cheaper. I dont' tink most people would know what to do with even the best 3D printer.

I won't even pretend to have any idea what things will be like in 300 years. But I can say that trying to extrapolate that far on a single technology is kind of dumb.

Oy, tell me about it. I got frustrated because I forgot my chalk and my hands were slipping off teh bar. On next set, i just hapharzardly grabbed teh bar and yanked (because I was angry and just watned to get it over with, I guess??). Tweaked my lower back. Fortuntely it was good again in a week or so, but that was just stupid. You really need to set stance, concentrate, tighten everyting, and THEN pull. Do that and you shouldn't really need any belts or anything like that.

because the point of the exercise is to stress the entire muscle system, and there is simply no point in letting your grip prevent you from using sufficient weight to properly exercise the entire rest of your body.

But doesn't your grip count as part of the system? I can deadlift 415 lbs with just an alternating grip and chalk (chalk does wonders, BTW). No belt. No straps. Honestly, that's not even pushing the limits of my grip. That's just as much as I can lift (1 RM).